NSCS: Kyle Busch to be sponsored by Banfield Pet Hospital at Phoenix

Joe Gibbs Racing announced earlier this week that Kyle Busch’s No. 18 Toyota Camry will feature the blue and orange colors of the Banfield Pet Hospital. The paint scheme will feature Busch’s pet dogs Kelly, Suzie and Lucy as they will be on the rear quarter panel of the car this weekend.

“Were expecting an addition to the family in May, but we’ve already had our “babies” – the dogs – for quite some time,” Busch said. “We’ve been talking to Mars about having our dogs on one of our cars and, thanks to Banfield, we were able to do that for the Phoenix race and Samantha (wife) and I are really excited about it. We obviously travel most of the year doing what we do in NASCAR, so we know that if we have any of the dogs with us and they have health issues, there is likely a Banfield Pet Hospital not too far away from wherever we are.

“Banfield also is big into preventive care for our pets, as well, which is important. I think everyone knows that we’ve been dog lovers our whole lives – my mom, dad, grandparents. Everyone feels like our pets are our children. I know a lot of NASCAR fans feel the same way about their pets. We’ll look forward to getting some pictures of the dogs on the Banfield car this weekend and we are pretty pumped about the opportunity.”

The Banfield Pet Hospital is “the largest privately owned veterinary practice in the world” with more than 850 hospital in the United States and Puerto Rico.

Busch will be looking to have a good run this weekend at Phoenix, with a win and 12 top-10 finishes in 19 previous starts in the desert.

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve been off as a company at Phoenix,” he commented. “We knew we needed to go out there and test and learn some things and try and get competitive there again. I think we learned some things there a while back, but we’ll see how it applies to the race weekend. You never know how it’s going to be until you get out there and see how you stack up. The surface has aged a bit so, hopefully, we have some more lanes to work with during the race on Sunday.”